Category: Tech
Cybernetics promised a merger of human and computer. Then why do we feel so out of the loop?
It began in the crucible of a world at war. The word cybernetics was coined in 1948 by the MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener, a man wrestling with the urgent problem of how to make a machine shoot down another machine. He reached back to the ancient Greek for kubernétes, the steersman, the one who guides and corrects. Plato had used it as a metaphor for governing a polis. Wiener used it to describe a new science of self-governing systems, of control and communication in the animal and the machine. The core idea was feedback, a circular flow of information that allows a system to sense its own performance and steer itself toward a goal.
The idea was not about mechanics but about behavior. The focus shifted from what things are to what they do. A thermostat maintaining the temperature of a room, a human body maintaining homeostasis, a pilot correcting the flight path of an airplane; all were, in this new light, functionally the same. They were all steersmen. The conciseness of the concept was seductive, its implications unsettling. It suggested a universal logic humming beneath the surface of both wired circuits and living tissue, blurring the line between the made and the born.
You shape the algorithm, and the algorithm shapes you.
The primordial cybernetic device was James Watt’s centrifugal governor, that elegant pirouette of spinning weights that tamed the steam engine in 1788. As the engine raced, the rotating balls swung wide, closing a valve to slow it; as the engine slowed, they fell, opening the valve again. It was a perfect, self-contained conversation.
But it was the Second World War that gave birth to the theory. Human reflexes were no longer fast enough for the new calculus of aerial combat. Wiener and his colleagues were tasked with solving the “air defense problem,” which was really a problem of prediction. They treated the enemy pilot, the gun, and the radar as a single, closed-loop system, each reacting to the other in a lethal dance. By the war’s end, as one analyst starkly put it, autonomous machines were shooting down other autonomous machines in the “first battle of the robots.”
In the Cold War that followed, cybernetics became a tool of ideological contest. In the West, it was the logic of the military-industrial complex, of corporate automation and the game theory of nuclear deterrence humming away in the computers at Project RAND. It promised optimization and control.
Yet the idea proved too fluid to be contained. While men in uniform were designing command-and-control networks, Stewart Brand was on the West Coast, publishing the Whole Earth Catalog. He filled its pages with cybernetic theory, reimagining it not as a tool for top-down control but for bottom-up, self-regulating communities. The catalog itself was a feedback loop, constantly updated by its readers. For a generation of commune-dwellers and future Silicon Valley pioneers, cybernetics was the grammar of personal liberation and ecological harmony. Computers, Brand wrote in Rolling Stone, were “coming to the people.”
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Photo by Matt Cardy
The Soviets, meanwhile, followed a more jagged path. Initially denouncing cybernetics as a “bourgeois pseudoscience,” they performed a complete reversal after Stalin’s death. Here was a science, they realized, that could perfect the planned economy. Visionaries like Anatoly Kitov and Victor Glushkov dreamed of a vast, nationwide computer network called OGAS, an electronic nervous system that would link every factory to a central hub in Moscow. It was an ambitious plan for “electronic socialism,” a rational, data-driven alternative to the brute-force dictates of the past. The system, they hoped, would offer a technocratic antidote to personal tyranny. OGAS was never fully built, stalled by bureaucracy and technical limits, but the dream itself was telling. Both superpowers saw in the feedback loop a reflection of their own ambitions: one for market efficiency, the other for state perfection.
Perhaps the most popular incarnation of the cybernetic dream was Project Cybersyn in Salvador Allende’s Chile. From 1971 to 1973, the British cybernetician Stafford Beer designed a nerve center for the Chilean economy. In a futuristic operations room that looked like a set from “Star Trek,” managers sat in molded white chairs, surrounded by screens displaying real-time production data fed from factories across the country via a network of telex machines. It was an attempt to steer a national economy in real-time, to keep it in a “dynamic equilibrium” against the shocks of strikes and embargoes. Cybersyn was a short-lived project, ending with the 1973 coup, but it remains a powerful symbol of the cybernetic ideal: a society as a single, responsive, controllable system.
The feedback loop was not confined to the physical world. It began to shape our fictions, which in turn shaped our reality. William Gibson, who knew famously little about computers, coined the word “cyberspace” in his 1984 novel “Neuromancer.” The vision was so compelling it seemed to will itself into existence, providing the language and the imaginative blueprint for a generation of technologists building the early internet and virtual reality. Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash” gave us the “metaverse” and the “avatar,” terms that have since migrated from fiction to corporate strategy. Cyberpunk literature provided the prototypes for the world we now inhabit.
Today, the word “cybernetics” feels archaic, a relic of a retro-futurist past. Yet its principles are more deeply embedded in our lives than Wiener could have imagined. We are all entangled in cybernetic loops. The social media algorithms that monitor our clicks to refine their feeds, which in turn shape our behavior, are feedback systems of astonishing power and intimacy. You shape the algorithm, and the algorithm shapes you. A self-driving car navigating city traffic is a cybernetic organism, constantly sensing, processing, and acting. Our smart homes and wearable devices are nodes in a network of perpetual, low-grade feedback.
We have built a world of steersmen, of systems that regulate themselves. The question that lingers is the one Wiener implicitly asked from the beginning. In a world of automated, self-correcting systems, who, or what, is charting the course?
Liberals, heavy porn users more open to having an AI friend, new study shows
A small but significant percentage of Americans say they are open to having a friendship with artificial intelligence, while some are even open to romance with AI.
The figures come from a new study by the Institute for Family Studies and YouGov, which surveyed American adults under 40 years old. Their data revealed that while very few young Americans are already friends with some sort of AI, about 10 times that amount are open to it.
‘It signals how loneliness and weakened human connection are driving some young adults.’
Just 1% of Americans under 40 who were surveyed said they were already friends with an AI. However, a staggering 10% said they are open to the idea. With 2,000 participants surveyed, that’s 200 people who said they might be friends with a computer program.
Liberals said they were more open to the idea of befriending AI (or are already in such a friendship) than conservatives were, to the tune of 14% of liberals vs. 9% of conservatives.
The idea of being in a “romantic” relationship with AI, not just a friendship, again produced some troubling — or scientifically relevant — responses.
When it comes to young adults who are not married or “cohabitating,” 7% said they are open to the idea of being in a romantic partnership with AI.
At the same time, a larger percentage of young adults think that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships; that number sits at a whopping 25%, or 500 respondents.
There exists a large crossover with frequent pornography users, as the more frequently one says they consume online porn, the more likely they are to be open to having an AI as a romantic partner, or are already in such a relationship.
Only 5% of those who said they never consume porn, or do so “a few times a year,” said they were open to an AI romantic partner.
That number goes up to 9% for those who watch porn between once or twice a month and several times per week. For those who watch online porn daily, the number was 11%.
Overall, young adults who are heavy porn users were the group most open to having an AI girlfriend or boyfriend, in addition to being the most open to an AI friendship.
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Graphic courtesy Institute for Family Studies
“Roughly one in 10 young Americans say they’re open to an AI friendship — but that should concern us,” Dr. Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies told Blaze News.
“It signals how loneliness and weakened human connection are driving some young adults to seek emotional comfort from machines rather than people,” she added.
Another interesting statistic to take home from the survey was the fact that young women were more likely than men to perceive AI as a threat in general, with 28% agreeing with the idea vs. 23% of men. Women are also less excited about AI’s effect on society; just 11% of women were excited vs. 20% of men.
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A new study hints what happens when superintelligence gets brain rot — just like us
AI and LLMs appear to be in a bit of a slump, with the latest revelatory scandal coming out of a major study showing that large language models, the closest we’ve come yet to so-called artificial general intelligence, are degraded in their capacities when they are subjected to lo-fi, low-quality, and “junk” content.
The study, from a triad of college computer science departments including University of Texas, set out to determine relationships between data quality and performance in LLMs. The scientists trained their LLMs on viral X.com/Twitter data, emphasizing high-engagement posts, and observed more than 20% reduction in reasoning capacity, 30% falloffs in contextual memory tasks, and — perhaps most ominously, since the study tested for measurable personality traits like agreeableness, extraversion, etc.— the scientists saw a leap in output that can technically be characterized as narcissistic and psychopathic.
Sound familiar?
The paper analogizes the function of the LLM performance with human cognitive performance and refers to this degradation in both humans and LLMs as “brain rot,” a “shorthand for how endless, low-effort, engagement-bait content can dull human cognition — eroding focus, memory discipline, and social judgment through compulsive online consumption.”
The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power.
There is no great or agreed-upon utility in cognition-driven analogies made between human and computer performance. The temptation persists for computer scientists and builders to read in too much, making categorical errors with respect to cognitive capacities, definitions of intelligence, and so forth. The temptation is to imagine that our creative capacities ‘out there’ are somehow reliable mirrors of the totality of our beings ‘in here,’ within our experience as humans.
We’ve seen something similar this year with the prevalence of so-called LLM psychosis, which — in yet another example of confusing terminology applied to already confused problems — seeks to describe neither psychosis embedded into LLMs nor that measured in their “behavior,” but rather the severe mental illness reported by many people after applying themselves, their attention, and their belief into computer-contained AI “personages” such as Claude or Grok. Why do they need names anyways? LLM 12-V1, for example, would be fine …
The “brain rot” study rather proves, if anything, that the project of creating AI is getting a little discombobulated within the metaphysical hall of mirrors its creators, backers, and believers have, so far, barged their way into, heedless of old-school measures like maps, armor, transport, a genuine plan. The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power. Yet, on the other hand, the inevitability of the integration of AI into society, into the project of terraforming the living earth, isn’t really being approached by a politically, or even financially, authoritative and responsible body — one which might perform the machine-yoking, human-compassion measures required if we’re to imagine ourselves marching together into and through that hall of mirrors to a hyper-advanced, technologically stable, and human-populated civilization.
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Photo by VCG / Contributor via Getty Images
So, when it’s observed here that AI seems to be in a bit of a slump — perhaps even a feedback loop of idiocy, greed, and uncertainty coupled, literally wired-in now, with the immediate survival demands of the human species — it’s not a thing we just ignore. A signal suggesting as much erupted last week from a broad coalition of high-profile media, business, faith, and arts voices brought under the aegis of the Statement on Superintelligence, which called for “a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is 1. broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and 2. strong public buy-in.”
There’s a balance, there are competing interests, and we’re all still living under a veil of commercial and mediated fifth-generation warfare. There’s a sort of adults-in-the-room quality we are desperately lacking at the moment. But the way the generational influences lay on the timeline isn’t helping. With boomers largely tech-illiterate but still hanging on, with Xers tech-literate but stuck in the middle (as ever), with huge populations of highly tech-saturated Millennials, Zoomers, and so-called generation Alpha waiting for their promised piece of the social contract, the friction heat is gathering. We would do well to recognize the stakes and thus honor the input of those future humans who shouldn’t have to be born into or navigate a hall of mirrors their predecessors failed to escape.
The next Pearl Harbor will be digital — and made in Beijing
Recent reports from “60 Minutes” have pulled back the digital curtain on a sobering truth. China is no longer just stealing data; it is mapping America’s weaknesses— its grids, its ground, its very geography. Retired General Tim Haugh, former head of both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, revealed that Chinese hackers have infiltrated American computer networks to an astonishing degree. They have targeted everything from utilities and pipelines to phone systems and local water plants. Even Littleton, Massachusetts, a town of barely 10,000, was hacked. The FBI found Beijing’s fingerprints deep inside its water and electric control systems.
It’s often said that wars are fought for territory. What’s new is that the territory no longer needs to be conquered; it can be connected.
If “they’re willing to go after that small provider that doesn’t have a national security connection,” Haugh said, “that means every target is on the list.” He’s right. In the cyber age, you don’t need to drop bombs to cripple a nation. You only need to flip the right digital switch.
Beijing could trigger chaos — blackouts, water contamination, grid failures — forcing Washington to fight panic while fighting a war.
The threat has moved beyond networks and into the soil itself. Chinese state-linked companies have quietly bought hundreds of thousands of acres of American farmland, often near military bases, data centers, and missile silos. It’s not agriculture but access.
Former national security official David Feith, who has served in both Trump administrations, warned that China’s land purchases could become launchpads for espionage or even sabotage. With today’s technology, a few shipping containers, drones, or concealed transmitters on “farmland” could paralyze a base or poison a water supply. “It’s an entirely new way of war,” Feith told “60 Minutes.”
Consider the precedent. In Ukraine, drones smuggled across borders struck Russian bombers. What’s near can strike what’s vital. The same principle applies here, where the developing pattern is unmistakable. From hacking Littleton’s utilities to purchasing property beside Air Force bases in North Dakota and Wyoming, Beijing’s strategy is not a flurry but a campaign measured in decades.
China doesn’t improvise; it incubates. Twenty-five-year plans are routine. Its slow, subterranean siege against American security marries patience with precision. Even crypto mines have become camouflage. So-called “data centers” owned by Chinese-backed firms are colossal power drains, often located near military facilities. Feith warns that they can be used to spy on communications or overload local grids.
Why does China do this? Not for trade or treasure, but for leverage in crisis. General Haugh calls it pre-positioning: If conflict erupts in the Indo-Pacific, Beijing could trigger chaos at home — blackouts, water contamination, grid failures — forcing Washington to fight panic while fighting a war.
There’s a dark brilliance to it. Attack the ordinary to paralyze the exceptional.
The battlefield is now your back yard. Across the United States, cyber leadership posts sit vacant and agencies remain demoralized. General Haugh himself was dismissed after Laura Loomer accused him of disloyalty for having served under Biden. It was political theater when what was needed was practical strength. You can loathe Biden and still love the republic; the two are not mutually exclusive. But partisanship has become a kind of paralysis, blinding so many to the broader threat.
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Photo by Handout / Contributor via Getty Images
So what should the Trump administration do?
First, secure the land before it secures you. Close the loopholes that let adversaries buy acreage near sensitive sites. Twenty-nine states already restrict foreign land ownership; make it 50. Ownership of soil is sovereignty. Selling it to a strategic foe is suicide by acreage.
Second, treat cyber defense like civil defense. Rebuild the firewall of faith in government competence. Incentivize companies to modernize their systems and share intelligence. For too long, agencies have hoarded information like monks guarding manuscripts. They should be arming every county, every company, every citizen with the tools to repel an attack.
Third, punish corporate complicity. Any American firm fronting for Chinese capital should face criminal penalties. Beijing doesn’t buy farmland to grow corn. It buys it to grow control.
Fourth, revive deterrence through dominance. China respects strength and exploits hesitation. The administration must make it clear that interference with its utilities or infrastructure will meet a proportional — or greater—response. The Great Firewall cuts both ways.
Finally, restore competence at the top. Reinstating seasoned experts like Haugh or empowering a new cyber czar with wartime authority would signal that the era of political purges in defense agencies is over. A nation that cannot trust its guardians will soon be guarded by its enemies.
Still, the challenge isn’t only technical. It is one of will and vigilance. Americans have grown used to comfort, assuming safety is permanent. But as these reports show, peace without preparation is just permission to be plundered.
And yet there’s a faint humor in our hubris. We let Chinese-backed crypto farms bloom beside missile bases and then wonder why the lights flicker. We ban plastic straws to “save” the planet, but sell farmland to the very regime paving it over.
Faith teaches that temptation often comes disguised as opportunity. The same is true in geopolitics. The common assumption is that China invades. Wrong. It integrates. And by the time we notice, it’s already inside the gate, serving sweet-and-sour sovereignty with a side of spyware.
America must wake up. The next Pearl Harbor won’t come by sea or sky. It will come through dead screens, dry taps, darkened cities, and finally dead bodies.
The tools to prevent that silence exist. The question is whether we have the discipline to use them. Because the greatest danger isn’t what China can take. It’s what America might give away, one password, one acre, one act of indifference at a time.